He’s Fallen Out of Love

I have been in a relationship with my boyfriend for two years. We currently live together. I don’t know where I stand with him. Only his close friends and his staff know about me.

Recently, he has been having a lot of visits from a neighbor of ours. When I return home she leaves 5 minutes after I arrive or leaves right away. I have found some disturbing texts between her and him where he describes me as his “housemate”.

He has not even told his parents about me, as they continually try to “hook him up” with other women. They do live in another country, but I feel that they should still know about me.

He used to express that he loved me. But just recently I asked him if he loved me and he responded, “I care about you” – What should I do?

This is a tough situation to be in especially if you both have already made a “commitment” to live with each other. A lot of women are or have been in situations where they’ve made a “commitment” without a commitment.

I’ve asked Eris Huemer of LoveEris.com to provide her insight on this question.

Eris Huemer, MA MFT, is the author of “Break-Up Emergency. A Guide to Transform Your Break UP into a Break THROUGH” and has been a reoccurring “Love Doctor,” on Ryan Seacrest’s national radio show. Eris is a licensed marriage and family therapist and relationship coach who specializes in doing Love Makeovers with singles and couples.

She guides people toward making positive and lasting life changes and helps them create relationships that they want and deserve. Eris helps people bring their Sexy Back in relationships while helping individuals and couples reinvent themselves from the inside out. Eris has a successful business in Los Angeles, CA, where she lives with her husband.

Dear Reader,

Its been two years. Thats 730 plus days that you have given to this man who won’t commit. And the two of you haven’t communicated well enough to know where you stand in this relationship. However, if you look at the reality of this situation, his actions are telling you where he stands. He hasn’t told his parents about you. He is flirting with the girl next door. And, he says that he “cares about you” – which is his way of saying, “I’m not in love with you.”

This is a tough position to be in. Especially because you love him.

Have you even heard the term failure to commit? A guys failure to commit to a relationship can be due to many factors.

The one that stands out here is living together before he puts a ring on it. One of the reasons men don’t commit fully is because they can live with someone and get all of the benefits (sex, cooking, cleaning, etc) and not make the commitment. In his mind its friends with benefits (i.e. housemate). They get the best of both worlds. If you are comfortable with this arrangement, then great. If you aren’t you probably shouldn’t be living together until you know for sure that he wants the same things out of the relationship that you do.

I suggest not living with your spouse before having “The Talk” – knowing exactly what you are working towards as a couple…or not. For example, do you want to get married, have children, live in the suburbs, etc. This conversation goes way deeper than “whats your favorite hobby” or “whats your sign?” You must know where a person stands before you move in with him.

That being said, you asked what you should do in your senerio.

Have “The Talk” NOW. Immediately.

Ask him when a good time to talk is so that he can pick the time and his defenses won’t be up as much. This Talk could begin something like this but will take on a life of its own.

“(Name), as much as I love you and would love to continue to be in a committed relationship with you, I am uncomfortable with how you are treating me. I feel awful when you flirt with the girl next door and I over heard you calling me your housemate. When I asked you if you loved me you said that you “cared about me”. You also haven’t mentioned me to your family, which I find odd. This is not the kind of relationship that I want to continue to be in.”

The course of this conversation will go wherever it goes. Listen to him. He will either realize what he has done and take the relationship to the next level of commitment or he won’t. The most important thing is for you to love yourself first.

If he’s not the one whos in love with you its time for you to Get Over It and find someone else who is.

Are you willing to wait longer for a commitment while he sorts these things out? If you are, that’s fine. But if you are agitated and ready to move things forward with the relationship, you have to do things differently.

You never want to “pressure” a man into a commitment. It doesn’t feel good to him and you won’t like it either.

You have to decide what you want and it might be necessary to pull back a little bit. You are doing the same for him, when you aren’t continuing to “bother” him about a commitment.

In order for him to take an action, your relationship has to be different. Meaning that you might not be able to provide for him in the same way as you would if you had a commitment. You might even have to move back into the dating stage and be willing and open to dating other people while he sorts through his issues.

Ultimately, it is your decision how you move forward but you should always make the decision you are comfortable with.

When having the commitment talk always work from your heart and the way you feel. You should also let him know that you love him and appreciate him but your needs aren’t being met, so that’s the reason you have to pull back.

Yes, commitment talk is scary because it can go either way, but once you decide what you truly want, i.e. commitment, marriage, kids. You have to be willing to let go of those things or people that aren’t willing to get you closer to it. But this can only happen when you are ready.

I agree with Robyn! It sounds like he responds when you aren’t being needy and pressuring him. I would continue to not call or text unless he initiates. Get your own life without him. Find your own happiness within. And, yes I think that he does love you. If he didn’t he wouldn’t contact you at all. But, as Robyn said, its up to you how long you want to wait. If it is meant to be it will be without you trying to make it happen.

When a man is pulling back from his decision, perhaps I should trigger his emotions to make him want me again. And since we already talked about this situation many times, I think its better for me to use other ways to get him back to me again.

Since I hate fighting or talking too much, is there a way to solve this problem with out doing so much effort?

Kindly address me with proper ideas to what I can do to make him come back to me without the need to talk over and over again?

When you try to trigger his emotions to make him want you again, he can feel your desperation.

Your actions are going to be most important. And these aren’t the actions you use to “convince” him to marry you.

Marriage is something you want a man to do because he wants to. He might have said that he wanted marriage previously, but he might have changed his mind.

It might even be pushing him farther away since he knows that this is what you really really want. He doesn’t want to disappoint you so he keeps his distance. I’m not sure if this is the truth in your case, but it could happen.

Are you open to just dating him? If so, then go back to the dating phase without marriage on the table. If you absolutely want to get married and you feel it is the right time, you have to be willing to let go a little bit by reducing your contact with him or not doing so much for him to see if he feels the same way.

hi Robyn,
am a divorced girl after few months of marriage when i realised he had been cheating on me .I met this guy who s a great guy . we initially were great friends and he would make plans for both of us, we got close pysically pretty early in abt few days but i still havent had sex so far, when i asked him about our relation he said he needs to discuss with his family .
In a month he almost withdrew , stopped making plans but would still call on cell stay in touch as distant frends..Am confused what shud i do, wait for him , move on , just stay friends , he still tries to get physically close sometimes when alone in my home, though i avoid that ..
he aint dating anyone or looking for some other girl, i know am the only girl in his life but his friend has been poisoning him about me of late ..guide me

My boyfriend&I have been havin problems for almost 2yrs now. The main reason was his mother not liking me so he felt like he has 2 choose&he didn’t want to dissapoint his mother. So hez been breakin up with&1/2mts later begs me to take him back and I always do. This happened at least 3 times this past year. The last time he dumped me wz Sept last year&in Nov he came crawling&begged me to take him back&I told him that this time I really need to think about it.

During all this time we’ve been spending a lot of time together as if we back together again but it was not official. This morning I rocked up at his place unannounced (we always do this it has never been a problem before). To my surprise I found him with another woman. He claims that she’s just a childhood friend who was not feeling well and needed a place to crash. They slept in the same bed but did not have sex, that’s what he said. When I asked this woman if they’re dating she says they’ve been dating since February last year. At first he said nothing happened but he is inlove with both of us for different reasons. But now he says he wants me he ddint mean what he said he loves me not her.

We do talk about marriage and he’s always said he wants to have a future with me. But he is not in a gud financial position to get married right now.

Part of me believes him when he says therz nothing between him&that woman. But I’m not sure because I don’t know what happened last night I was not there. Earlier yesterday we had a tiff and it hurts me that a few hours later he found solace in another woman’s arms.